


looking for stars

by dewshi



Series: mountain dew commercials, disguised as love poems [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Established Relationship, Feelings Jams, Fluff, M/M, Meteorstuck, No plot just fluff, Stargazing, dumb flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25589923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewshi/pseuds/dewshi
Summary: Dave and Karkat go stargazing in the Furthest Ring.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Series: mountain dew commercials, disguised as love poems [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854733
Comments: 3
Kudos: 92





	looking for stars

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't sleep, and then i saw a star outside my window, and then i thought "hey. i could make a davekat fic out of that." and then i stayed up all night writing it. and it turned out good!!! so here it is.

When you were a kid, some nights you just couldn't sleep. You felt like something was hiding in the corners of your room, waiting for you to drop your guard. You were paralyzed, huddled up and sweating your balls off under layers on layers of blankets. Made sure to protect your back and your limbs and to keep your hands free and your face hidden.

Then, eventually, you'd get too tired to keep it up. Your brain would finally believe that no bogeyman would wait that long to come get you. So you'd loosen up the blanket burrito and try to get comfortable. Sleep would still elude you.

So, instead, you would sit up and open the window. You always tried to be as quiet as possible, but no matter what you did, it would still creak. A tremor of fear always ran up your spine when it did.

You'd stare out the window at the sliver of dark sky. Distant factories puffed out smoke trails into the sky. Your room would fill with the rumbling sounds of late-night traffic. It was a noisy ambiance, but to you, it was calming. 

You would try to spot the natural lights overhead from between the skyrises. The city sky was so polluted with light that you would be lucky to see even a single star. But you still tried. And whenever you did see a star in that sliver of sky that you had access to, it felt like magic. 

In your mind, it was almost like the universe wanted you to see it. You wondered if that same star was visible in the bright, starry skies that hung above your friends' homes. Just that one little speck among a thousand that they could see, but you couldn't. 

That one star was your star. That was enough for you.

The ratio of lights to darkness is different in the sky of the Furthest Ring. Especially considering the dream bubbles.

It's always night on the meteor. You go outside sometimes, just to take it all in. The explosion of bright lights and colors fills your view, no matter what direction you look. 

It's colder than the nights were in Houston. There aren't any sounds. None at all. Just an eternal, uncaring void full of deafening silence and the ghosts of millions whizzing past at lightspeed. None of these are your stars. They all belong to someone else. You don't have a place in it. You're out of your depth, a fish out of water.

So it's not really the same as what you had back home.

Sometimes you'd sit down anyway and just watch it all pass slowly by. What better is there to do?

You don't go up there as often after you start hanging out with Karkat. You're busy. You're building Can Town and watching shitty Dane Cook films and rediscovering all the old music you'd made that ended up getting saved onto your turntables.

You think everybody knew you liked Karkat before you knew about it. Rose knew. Terezi knew. The Mayor knew. ...Karkat knew.

He gave you the time you needed to figure it out yourself. Guy's such a damn trooper. If you were him, you would have slapped you for how much of an asshat you were.

But Karkat didn't seem to mind too much. Definitely not, if the kisses you eventually started sharing are any indication. 

He may have known first, but he wasn't any more confident about it, honestly. At first, when you found out he already had his feelings for you figured out, you thought you would horrifically embarrass yourself trying to be cool.

You did, but so did he. It took holding his hand to realize what a flustered mess he was about you. He was nervous, trembling. Ridiculously gentle. For the first few months after you decided to test out the waters with him, every day was nothing but an endless barrage of "sorry, am I breathing too loud?" and "let me know if you want me to move, Dave," and "I'm sorry! I didn't hurt you, did I?"

No, Karkat, you're breathing just fine. No, Karkles, you don't need to move, you're perfect where you are. No, babe, your teeth aren't that sharp. You might have told him off about it, if he hadn't been implicitly confirming you weren't the only one terrified to scare him off.

It's been quite a while now. It's been really good. Teenage first-relationship anxiety is so much better than debilitating existential fear. 

It's nice to be around him. You love watching him discover stuff you've introduced to him - play Earth video games, mix his first track, fall slowly in love with Jay Baruchel in _I'm Reed Fish._ The way he gets frustrated when he loses a life or screws up the mix. Then, the triumphant, heart-melting smile he gives you when he finally gets his way.

You love watching him when he talks, rambling for half an hour about the character arcs in _Thresh Prince of Bel-Air_ or spontaneously shouting out an essay-length analysis on the quadrant dynamics in his favorite movies. He talks almost as much as you do. His weird troll ears perk up whenever he realizes that you were actually paying attention. It makes your face get all flushed. Uncool.

He sleeps in your bed most nights nowadays. You never thought you'd be into physical affection, but you were wrong. Trolls are so weird in that regard. They get all curled around you like a constrictor boa. Karkat always likes to cling to you. His legs end up in the weirdest positions. 

He's really warm. Almost too warm. And couple that with the rough chirping sounds he lets out with every other breath while he's asleep. They echo from the metal walls of your room. It reminds you of those nights in your room when you were a kid, looking for stars. It's comforting.

"Hey, Dave. Are you busy?" Karkat asks one day, entering your room. You look up from your laptop and pull your headphones down around your neck. He's in the doorway with a basket in his hand. It has a picnic blanket in it. "Oh, good, you're still among the living. Shake that trance out of your limbs and come with me."

He doesn't wait for you. You stand up and follow him through the hallway, around nondescript metal corners and up wide, echoing stairwells. You recognize the path you're taking.

Karkat pushes open a door. You feel the gentle spread of cold outdoor air creep in past him. "Here."

You follow him out onto the same platform you used to come to all those months ago. Nothing has changed. The sky overhead is still full of brightly colored bubbles. The void that divides them is just as dark, empty and all-encompassing as you remembered.

"Dave," Karkat says. You turn. He's spread the picnic blanket on the ground. He also brought a basketful of pillows. Probably pillaged from the chests. He's sitting down there, knees bunched up. You go over and sit down next to him.

"What's up?" you ask. He looks at you long, silent, with those big puppy-dog eyes, eyebrows drawn. There's a sort of deep melancholy in his eyes. Your heart skips a beat when you meet his gaze. Slowly, he reaches over and pushes your shades into your hair. The speckled vermilion of his irises is brilliant.

He leans in to kiss you. It's a gentle, but insistent, warm press of his mouth to yours. You close your eyes and lean forward to reciprocate. His hands find yours. You gently trace calloused knuckles you can't see.

When you separate, he places his forehead against the crook of your shoulder. You feel the shape of his horns on your neck. You chuckle and brush your thumbs over the backs of his hands. "You brought up all this stuff just to kiss? We have beds downstairs, you know. They're just as comfortable."

"Shut it, smartass," he grumbles into the collar of your cape. You drop a kiss into the mess of his black hair. You sit there in silence for a while, just him leaning against you.

Eventually, you slide your hands up his arms and ease him to lie down in the pillows, slipping next to him. Why not use them, after all, if he went through the trouble of bringing them? He looks like he's asleep. His arm goes around your chest and he holds you close, like it's the most natural thing to do in the whole world.

You let yourself relax into the soft pillows. The dreambubbles are all above you, distant and shiny. It really does feel like stargazing.

"What if," you mumble. Karkat hums and cracks his eyes open to look at you, half-lidded. Not asleep. You mess with his hair. "What if we came up with a bunch of dreambubble constellations? We could name them all after each other. We'd be the pioneers of dreambubble astronomy."

Karkat scoffs. "They'd change in about a week. Maybe less."

"I know," you say. "They'd just be for us to remember."

Karkat stops for a moment and then melts against you. You huff a breath and look up at the bubbles. Their motion isn't really noticeable, but you know, slowly, you're moving past them. You point up. 

"There's Karkatos." Karkat looks at where you're pointing. The shape is kind of maybe like a person, if you squint. You point at another random cluster. "And that one's Karkleitos."

"And that one is Douchebag In Sunglasses," Karkat grumbles, pointing past you. You snort.

"Over there is Shouty Goblin," you say, pointing somewhere without really paying attention.

"Fuck you," he responds amicably. "Bastard."

You laugh. "You know, they found the brightest star in the Furthest Ring."

"What?" Karkat says drowsily. "There aren't any stars out here."

"They found the brightest star in the Furthest Ring," you repeat and point at him. "He's right here."

Karkat takes about 2 seconds to figure that one out. Then his face cracks into that sort of smile that he only does when he's trying not to laugh. He shoves his face into your shirt and starts twitching with laughter.

"It's true!" you say. "It's science, babe."

"No, no, no," Karkat says, still laughing. "Go fuck yourself, assbasket."

"You're arguing with science, 'Kats," you say. "It's reliable, verifiable, falsifiable-"

"I swear to all that is good in this world, Dave, if you start rapping about this," he chuckles. "I will go wild. I'll fucking tear you to pieces. I won't be able to stop myself."

You let the conversation die with some quiet laughter and a kiss on the crown of his head.

You go back to silence, to Karkat's back rising and falling, face hidden in your clothes. You let yourself relax and watch the sky.

"Why'd you really bring me out here?" you ask. Karkat shifts and lifts his head. You tilt yours so you can meet his half-lidded eyes.

Karkat pushes himself up to lean on his elbows. Aw. Goodbye, warm and huggable Karkat-shaped pillow. The light of the bubbles behind him eclipses the profile of his face. Sunken eyes. Floppy troll ears. Messy, fluffy hair. 

"When I was a kid," he starts. "Maybe like two and a half sweeps or something like that, just a little after me and my lusus were done building my hive."

His voice is like the sound inside a seashell.

"Every evening, right after I woke up, I always went to the balcony on the top floor of my hive to look for the first stars," he says with uncharacteristic softness. "Alternia was always so dark. There weren't many stars in the sky. I used to wonder if there were really any other stars at all. But then, every time I looked, I always found one. It made me hope, y'know, that maybe there was more to the world than… sitting inside and being scared."

He doesn't say anything after that. You're not sure if he wants you to speak. But, as always, you do anyway.

"I kinda had the same thing," you say. He looks at you. You feel a little shy under his gaze. "To me, it was like… I knew that if I saw a star, it would be visible to my friends too. And that meant that… something was sorta connecting us. Wasn't big, but… there was a star out there that was just ours, y'know?"

Karkat nods slowly. He slips back down, using your arm as a headrest. You feel his body heat warming you up in the cold darkness.

"Too bad there aren't any stars out here," he sighs eventually. Resignedly.

You fall into thoughtful silence for a few moments. Then you lean harder against him. "Yeah, there are."

He gives you a look and you smile.

"I told you, you're the brightest one."

Karkat grins just a little, trying to contain it. It sets your heart on fire. He punches you gently. "Don't fucking say that shit."

"It's science! How many times do I have to-"

"It's not science, oh my god," Karkat laughs. "I'm going to kill you!"

"That's what they said to Galileo, too," you protest, and he shuts you up with a move of his head and another kiss. You pull him closer and let him drop his weight on you and kiss all your thoughts away.

Paradox Space doesn't feel so cold anymore.


End file.
